Fugard Chicago 2010 sample ad

I’ve been meaning to post on this project for a while.  It’s one of my highlights of 2010.  Exercising the creativity that brought us into the field of arts marketing, and demonstrating the collaborative work style required of all practitioners of theater, three Chicago theater marketing directors (Adam Thurman of Court Theatre, Lara Goetsch of TimeLine Theatre Company and myself – then at Remy Bumppo Theatre Company, came together in summer of 2009 to discuss a remarkable coincidence.  All three companies had just announced they would be presenting plays by not-so-often produced playwright Athol Fugard in the spring of 2010.  Spurred on by shrinking budgets due to the economic downturn – we brainstormed ideas for combining our resources and strengths to raise awareness of the playwright and ensure strong ticket sales for the plays.

Out of that first conversation over coffee, came the idea of a collaborative website: FugardChicago2010.  The purposes of the site: to elevate the playwright by highlighting his contribution to the world stage, and to provide a portal to each company’s website for single ticket sales.  The site would reward visitors who joined the FugardChicago2010 e-mail list with a discount code that could be redeemed at the box offices. The site would also sell 3-play subscriptions.

We quickly realized that through coordinated efforts, we could greatly expand our exposure and encourage audience crossover without increasing our marketing budgets.  So we did a few key things:

1) we established the level of current audience crossover between our mail lists

2) we agreed to share a dramaturg (the fabulous Kelli Marino), who would write the website copy and a series of articles on Fugard and the plays to be shared with all three patron bases.

3) we collaborated on PR efforts

4) we allocated a portion of our ad budgets to promote the website

5) we created a free public event to further promote the collaboration

Results:

One of the biggest immediate payoffs was the press coverage.  By banding together we made the “top 10 shows to see” lists of several local news outlets.  We scored a front page Sunday arts section feature in the Chicago Sun-Times.  And benefited from  having each theater’s productions tagged in most of the preview stories and reviews secured by the project partners.

The partnership gave us a heft and credibility we didn’t have individually, demonstrated by our being invited by MCA Stage to present a public panel discussion called “Writing for Change” as an homage to Fugard, which featured an exhilarating lineup of hot young playwrights including Tarell Alvin McCraney (The Brother/Sister Plays; Wig Out!), Kristoffer Diaz (The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity; Welcome to Arroyos), Young Jean Lee (The Shipment; CHURCH; Pullman, WA) and Tanya Saracho (Generic Latina; S-E-X-Oh!; and adaptor of The House on Mango Street for Steppenwolf Theatre).  Big thanks to Susan Padveen of Columbia College Chicago for conceiving of and assembling the panel.

Another huge benefit, was that by coordinating our eCommunications efforts, and providing each other with photos, video clips, notice of special events and the shared dramaturgical articles – we were able to essentially triple our audience exposure with every e-mail we dispatched.

An unforseen perk of the collaboration was that our meetings provided a chance to exchange info with each other on best practices, benchmark our sales, and talk about strategies and tactics we were experimenting with.

When we met recently to recap the project – we agreed one of the great successes was the way we split up responsibilities for the planning and implementation of the project.  At the start we volunteered to handle different aspects of the project, based on our strengths – which was key to it being such a positive experience.  No one felt overworked, and everyone felt ownership.  It was a great model for collaboration.

We are currently pulling together final data to determine post-project audience crossover results.  But I think I can speak for my cohorts when I say, this collaboration was an unqualified success.

Stay tuned for future Chicago theater cooperative marketing efforts.  We were delighted to have been sponsored in this endeavor by the League of Chicago Theaters, who now owns the collaborative website template.  Contact the League if you are interested in setting up a partnership like FugardChicago2010.